Beer-a-Day #23
Pours orange with some chill haze. Plenty of citrus in the aroma. More citrus in the taste, with a rather light mouthfeel and pleasant hop bitterness. Refreshing.
Middle Ages Brewing ImPaled Ale
Middle Ages ImPaled Ale
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Tag Archives: middle ages brewing
IPA Bake Off
Back in October we tried an Octoberfest bake off (a taste test) and it wasn’t that successful. Nice.. not thrillin’, but nice. So when a different group of my friends suggested a blind IPA taste testing, I wasn’t very optimistic; but of course I was game anyway.
Surprise! Not only was it a great evening, the winners and losers made it all that much more interesting. We scored them differently than I had done previously, not just on an overall impression like the unofficial Hop-Talk rating system is built upon, but rather a much more detailed method using a standard beer judging sheet. It is based on an overall score of 50 points made up of several categories.
Here are the results. I rounded the averages of the four of us playing judge…
My comments after the tasting go like this…
Rogue - Yes, it stood alone at the top.
Stone – One of my favorite IPA’s. My score for it probably would have been higher but I hadn’t just taken a break in tasting for a slice of Buffalo Pizza… probably not the best idea and probably affected the overall result.
Butternut – We were all surprised by this one, but me most of all as I really don’t like Butternut’s other brews. I’m going to have to go back for this one.
Middle Ages – While we all know and love this IPA, none of us expected it to rate so high. Glad to see it up there.
Sam Smith – I nailed the import.
I had a great time doing this… I don’t know if the flavors varied that much greater than the octoberfest styles, or if the method in judging was what made it so much better. In any case, the casual nature and long evening in which we took to do it was one for the books.
Special thanks to our servers, Ellie & Katie, and their scientific strategy to organization assuring accurate test results. (We will excuse the Yuengling Porter incident.)
Choosing a St. Patty’s Day Beer – A discussion
It is never too early to plan for your St. Patrick’s Day party so I thought I would start a discussion with Al and our readers about what types of beer selection you think are best to have on hand to please the crowd on March 17th.
All good hosts would want to be able to please a wide variety of drinkers. Some guests may not even *gasp* drink beer! If it were my party, I would try to meet three basic factions: 1) the occasional beer drinker, 2) the serious, megabrew junkie, and 3) the serious, real beer, drinker. (I fall into this last category.) I would love to suggest all sorts of beers, but some are just so hard to find, I will try to stick with varieties that most people can get.
The occasional beer drinker I’m defining as is the kind of person who might prefer wine over beer; or, one who doesn’t drink beer often but likes quality and interesting beer when they do drink. For this person, you might seek out something like Southampton’s Irish Red or Sam Adams Cream Stout.
Do I have to define the megabrew junkie? This is a crowd I would suggest Killian’s Irish Red for. Killian’s is made by a megabrewery (Coors) and is a weak attempt at a craft beer, but it might be different enough for your megabrewery junkie to feel a little more in with the real beer drinkers. (and a little more Irish)
I think Guinness is a must, whether that is all you drink, if you have just one, or if you plan to make some black and tans. Guinness is true to the Irish Dry Stout style, it is sure to please the true Irishman, and it makes for a darn good breakfast the next morning as well.
For that real die-hard craft beer snob (kind of like me) I suggest seeking out something different and don’t be afraid to draw outside the lines, especially if the Irish part of St. Patrick’s Day is not as important as the social beer drinking aspect. For these few people, seek out a couple big bottles of Smuttynose Scotch Style Ale or Middle Ages Brewing Blackheart Stout. Or, because I’m familiar with the products, a growler of 120 Shilling Ale (Lake Placid Brewery) for those in upstate New York, or Willy’s Wee Heavy (Long Valley Pub and Brewery) for those in New Jersey.
Maybe none of this matters to you in making your beer selections for St. Patrick’s Day; if not, tell us!
